Upwest & Downeast: Meandering the Maine Coast by Sea Kayak (English Edition)

Long before Maine stamped the phrase ‘Vacationland’ on its license plates, schooner captains sailed up the coast from Boston with the prevailing winds, heading down-wind and east, or down-east, a term that has since become synonymous with both a place and a direction of travel. Michael & Rebecca Daugherty began their summer-long sea kayak excursion heading the opposite direction, paddling west and mostly up-wind, or up-west, thus creating a hashtag-worthy phrase that hasn’t exactly caught-on.
Whatever direction you go, the Maine coast is vaster and more diverse than most people know, with contorted tidal rivers reaching far inland and archipelagoes of glacial islands –
more than 3000 in all – sprinkled around its bays like stepping-stones. Altogether, the coast encompasses over 6000 miles of shoreline. While more than half a million people live in Portland’s metropolitan area, much of the coast sees little traffic, especially the sparsely populated Bold Coast, near the Canadian border. These places are all part of the Maine Island Trail, a waterway linked by over 230 islands and mainland sites that enable day use or camping, making the Maine coast truly a dream destination for sea kayakers.
For a dozen years, Michael & Rebecca Daugherty lived within sight of the Stonington archipelago, one of the densest concentrations of islands along the coast, and learned to paddle sea kayaks, all the while dreaming of taking a season off from their usual lives to live out of their kayaks among the islands. Finally, after giving-up their business and their home, that’s what they did. This is the story of a summer-long excursion, twice-paddling the stretch of coast between Portland and the Canadian border. More than covering miles though, the journey was the fulfillment of a fantasy, years in the making, to live a simpler existence for a while, to make the most of the moment and the place, and to think about what really mattered.